Sunday, May 18. 2008

Comparison of Microsoft SQL Server 2005, MySQL 5, and PostgreSQL 8.3

The below is by no means an exhaustive comparison of these 3 databases and functionality may not
be necessarily ordered in order of importance. These are just our experiences with using these 3 databases.
These are the databases we use most often. If we left your favorite database out - please don't take offense. Firebird for one has some neat features such as its small footprint and extensive SQL support, but we have not explored that Db.

People ask us time and time again what's the difference why should you care which database you use. We will
try to be very fair in our comparison. We will show equally how PostgreSQL sucks compared to the others. These are the items we
most care about or think others most care about. There are numerous other differences if you get deep into the trenches of each.

If you really want to get into the guts of a relational database and the various parts that make it up and how the various databases differentiate in their implementations,
we suggest reading Architecture of a Database System by
Joseph M. Hellerstein, Michael Stonebraker, and James Hamilton. Architecture of a Database System focuses mostly on Oracle, DB2, and SQL Server but does provide some insight into MySQL and PostgreSQL.